I washed his hair, the bubbles turning bright red, then pink, then fading, finally, to white. He winced, once, when my fingers went over the bump on the back of his head—I’d forgotten he’d cracked his skull, too. Even when there were no more bubbles to rinse, I slid my fingers through his hair a few more times. He looked up at me when my hands finally went still.
His eyes were burning a low silver, swirling in lazy circles. He stood slowly, too close to me, and reached for the button on his jeans, pausing to see if I’d follow his cue. I reached for the button on my own jeans, which were irreparably stained with a mixture of muddy snow and vampire blood. We slid our jeans off and added them to the pile. He was wearing a pair of black boxer briefs, and nothing else—I’d seen him this unclothed once before, after the Halloween party, but it had been dark, and I’d been drunk, and my memory did not do him justice. I swallowed, heart hammering.
It was the wrong thing to say, but before anything happened, if anything was even going to happen, I had to tell him.
I looked at him, eyes already watering. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He flinched.
Like that, the mood was gone, and I felt lost and disgusted and ashamed. I turned away from him, wanting suddenly to be anywhere but here because everything was messed up and I couldn’t fix it and he wouldn’t talk to me. And then his hand was on my shoulder, lightly, as if afraid I’d shrug it off. He pulled my hair to the side, running his knuckles down my spine in an echo of the dance we’d shared only a week before. And then he was scrubbing the blood off my arms and neck while I stood there shaking. When we were both finally clean, he picked me up, nudged open the shower door, and carried me to the nearly full bath, and I let him because I was so tired. He stepped in carefully, lowering us both into the steaming water. At least the bubbles covered up the wounds on his chest—at least they covered up the most obvious evidence of my guilt.
I finally got up the courage to murmur what had been on my mind since I realized who Tommie was. “Please don’t hate me.”
He tensed, I could feel the reaction course through the muscles in his arms. “Caitlin—stop it. Stop apologizing.”
I didn’t want to be touching him anymore, not if he wouldn’t listen to me, not if he wouldn’t talk about this—but when I tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let me.
“I can’t breathe,” I said, beginning to hyperventilate, and he instantly let go. I clung to the edge of the tub with both hands while he brushed the hair back from my face.
“Cait,” he whispered again, “it’s over now. It’s okay. We’re safe. Why are you crying?”
I turned to him, tears spilling down my cheeks. “Because I’m mad at you!” I sputtered, not realizing it was true until I said it out loud. “Because you say it’s okay, and it’s bullshit, because it’s not okay.”
I could feel it, all of it, weeks of things I shouldn’t have left unsaid, all pouring out now in an unstoppable flow. “You’ve been such a dick,” I said, as if trying to explain something to a third-grader. “You pushed me away, you just shut down weeks ago, and you didn’t tell me why, and it wasn’t fair. I hated it, and you didn’t care. I’m m-mad”—my voice caught on a fresh wave of angry tears—“because I should have known better, I should have known it was him. I just wanted to feel close to somebody again, and it didn’t seem like too much to ask. I mean, come on! Normal people don’t have to deal with this shit! Normal people can date someone and then decide their boyfriend’s a jerk and break up and move on and they don’t have to worry that the person they move on to is going to be a psychopathic demon that wants to impregnate them! This whole thing is stupid. This situation is stupid. No shit I kissed Tommie—of course I kissed Tommie. I’m mad at you.”
I crouched back against the far edge of the tub. “I officially resign from the supernatural shit. I’m done with this—I’m done with all of it.” Adrian sat staring at me with a dumbstruck look on his face. “So we’re here,” I continued, “and we’ve gone through all this, and you died, and then you un-died, and so you tell me, clearly, to my face—tell me how we’re going to fix this. Tell me how we’re going to be okay.”
I let the silence draw on for five impossibly long seconds, but he didn’t answer, because he was Adrian, and God forbid Adrian answer any question, ever.
I nodded. “Okay.”